Bitter showdown ahead over Democrats’ plans to include women in the draft

Republicans are gearing up for a bitter showdown over a proposal to include women in the military draft as House and Senate committees hammer out the annual defense policy bill.

The Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed committee markup recently, offers key wins for hawks on the Hill including a $45 billion top-line boost to President Biden’s Pentagon budget and a greenlight for the Navy to continue development of its nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile program recently scuttled by the administration.

But the bill also thrusts the military back...